Tower or Frying Pan?

Last night we had the second of 4 nights of Rolling Response in Firefighter 2. It was very tiresome. They started by doing a live burn using pallettes on the first floor. The fire got cranking and we could feel the heat from the door frame. The first evolution put me with Jack and some other kid onto the third floor, where we did a search, went down a flight, searched the second floor and came out - a little warm, not bad.

Then they sent us in teams of 2, after adding a few more pallettes to the can. The stairwells were acting as chimneys, and that was no joke as the temperature on the stairs was probably around 400 degrees. Up to the second, crawl around room, meet, back to the light, stand, up to the third, rinse lather and repeat. We did this on 4 consecutive flights, exiting the fire escape on the 5th floor.

Let's just say this took about 75% of my energy out completely. Jack was my partner for evolution number 3. Already, the tips of my boots were melted, it felt like there was fire inside my firepants, and I could NOT catch my breath. We tirelessly walked up 5 flights of fire escape stairs, stopping on every platform to rest momentarily. I ended up going in with someone else however.

Upon entering, the floor was hot - I mean really hot. As we got closer to the ground floor, the ground heated up 100x on every floor. By the third floor, it was almost unbearable on my hands and knees, and nearly burning right through my gear. I felt like I was crawling on a frying pan.

When we finally got out (a little early since the kid's bottle ran out), I nearly passed out. I hurriedly took all my gear off except for my fire pants, which I opened to let the burning hot air out. When I went to take a piss, my belt buckle, which was safely under my firepants, was even hot - very hot - to the touch.